Monday, May 21, 2007

Arranged Parenting   [Stanley Kurtz]

Earlier this month, in "Scary Book," I wrote about Everything Conceivable, Liza Mundy’s powerful account of the ways in which assisted reproduction is transforming the family. "Mummy, Daddy, donor," an edited extract from the book, is now available online. (There’s also this new, critical, and helpful review of Everything Conceivable.) While the book is filled with more spectacular stuff than you’ll find in the extract, "Mummy, Daddy, donor" does give you a feel for the larger account.

Mundy is a liberal feminist who largely favors the brave new world she portrays. The theme of Mundy’s new world is "love makes a family," which essentially means that the biological mother-father-child family is replaced by an infinitely flexible series of arrangements. The most unusual family form described in Mundy’s extract is "arranged parenting," where a man or woman advertise for a partner to have children with using IVF. Arranged parenting involves a shared custody arrangement from birth, "without the dating, the marriage, the sex or the divorce." So in the same way that gay-marriage proponents point to infertile heterosexual couples as a precedent, "arranged parenting" can now claim divorce and shared custody as a precedent. As Mundy notes, anomalous family forms that used to happen by accident or tragedy are now being consciously formed from the start.

I recently posted about Pennsylvania’s triple parenting decision (here and here). Mundy’s extract briefly describes a quadruple parenting arrangement that eventually morphs into a sextuple parenting arrangement.

Without directly invoking same-sex marriage, Mundy effectively makes David Blankenhorn’s argument: developments like "single mothers by choice," "arranged parenting," and triple-quadruple parenting are linked and mutually reinforcing phenomena, all of which weaken the central purpose of marriage–encouraging the biological mother and father to live together and raise their children.

Clearly, assisted reproduction now poses a fundamental threat to the family. And as Blankenhorn argues, the fertility industry needs far more scrutiny and regulation. The problem with same-sex marriage is that it will ratify the "love makes a family" ideology, thereby encouraging further legal and cultural acceptance for the whole panoply of radical family forms described by Mundy.

In short, if you think scenarios involving a radical deconstruction of the family are far-fetched, just read Everything Conceivable. As Mundy shows, radical changes are already happening, and assisted reproduction is clearly a key driver of the phenomenon. Ask yourself whether, in the context of the radical transformation described by Mundy, same-sex marriage will, or will not, tend to reinforce the changes.

05/21 10:40 AMShare